Talk:Sociolinguistics/Archive 1

Archive 1

Difference according to class

Recently a chart under the heading Difference according to class was changed to refer to "Bristolian dialect" versus "Standard English." (It had previously been headed "Vicky Pollard ...Queen Elizabeth II".)

"Bristolian" is a regional descriptor ('from Bristol'), not a class descriptor. "Standard English" may suggest class, as well as other axes of variation (see, e.g. Trudgill 1999). I do not know if the examples, which were not changed when the heading was, actually reflect Bristol dialect features.

While it might be problematic to refer to a fictional character, the Pollard character does seem to satirize class - as well as age - linked variation. Rather than changing labels, could we replace these possibly apocryphal examples with real ones, preferably from published sources? Cnilep (talk) 23:53, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

gynocentric

Has anyone bothered to read the male-female sociolinguistic differences in their entirety? If so, do they not sound feeble and narrowminded? There are emotionally and normativelly laden words for every characteristic, distributed on the basis of the stereotypical assumption that women are striving for intimacy, while men born to compete. This is the old Darwinian view of evolution, applied to a petit-bourgeois society which divides the nuclear family into the house labour unit and the provider unit. Look at the biased results it produces. With such results sociolinguistics doesn't even have a claim to science. It's pure reproduction of stereotypes- with the new trend to be gynocentric. It would be one thing to seek to distribute the light between men and women, its another when the males are described as aggresive conversationalists vs. the democratic (hence "good") peaceful women. Bunk!

Why is sociolinguistics not scientific if it comes up with these results? If you make a scientific analysis of speech patterns, and find these results, then it is as valid as the other way round. If there are, however, studies which do show the opposite, they should be cited. BovineBeast 12:02, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

A large number of these studies were conducted between 1960 and 1980. The social climate of the America and the world, especially towards gender, has changed significantly since this period. Perhaps mentioning that "women have, on average higher verbal intelligence than men" and citing a study conducted almost forty years ago mentioned in a book about checking one's own IQ is not prudent if we are striving towards objectivity. It appears as though the author is grasping at straws to prove that women are more conversationally intelligent than men. I am certain that if such a study were conducted across multiple social classes today, the results would differ. Perhaps the upper-class ladies of the Hamptons display this "conversational politeness" and perhaps the young go-getters on Wall Street are all aggressive, conversational juggernauts, but a study conducted in a middle-class high school would most likely significantly yield different results- the effeminate male theatre students taking turns in conversation while the cheerleaders shout profanities at each other across the football field. Nevah Entitar 12:15, Dec 4, 2005 (EDT)

Yes absolutely, I am not judging the quality of the male/female part about attitudes towards language and communications, but I feel that this article is really not balanced as this gives too much importance to this area. --Khalid hassani 23:06, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the article takes too much time on that subject, and especially since that is the least grounded one. Cogito-ergo-sum

As Nevah Entitar already said: Most studies are old. Jespersen found in the 1920 that women were inferior in communication - that was due to the lack of access to education at that time. Feminists in the 70s and 80s tried to proove the many ways that men oppress women - So they looked into language as well and found something. In some cases it turned out that the sex of the interviewer was much more relevant than the sex of the person that was to be examined. In the latest edition of "Introduction to Sociolinguistics" Wardaugh writes that most authors agree that there's nothing like a language of men and women. There are differences in the way men and women use language but other factors are more relevant by far: Status, Relationship, Age, education aso. Thus Deborah Tannen puts the differences more into a cultural perspective. Women behave like Women and Men behave like Men. And they all fill their role in society. That is a crucial difference: Jespersen and Lakoff saw womens use of language as inferior to men's use. Dale Spenser regarded it as part of the global male conspiracy against women... If women were so inferior to men, wouldn't they have died out long ago :-D --Kaffeeringe.de 14:35, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

The section Differences according to gender is quite large, and might even warrant its own page. Certainly, Differences according to geography looks downright pathetic in comparison. That said, however, studies of language and gender are relatively more robust than studies of language and class or language and age. (See, for example, the journals Gender and language and Women and language, and the book series Oxford studies in language and gender.) I think that argues more for strengthening the other sections than weakening this one, though. I disagree with the unsigned commenter that any of these sub-fields is "bunk". As for, "A large number of these studies were conducted between 1960 and 1980," and therefore, "Most studies are old," I count thirteen references to studies published in or before 1980, and sixteen to studies published since 1981. Speech norms (to say nothing of academic trends) do indeed change over time (see Differences according to age, especially the apparent-time hypothesis), but more recent findings are represented here.Cnilep (talk) 19:17, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Removed pending citation

Collaborative versus competitive Women tend towards collaborative language, a fact manifest in their relatively high use of minimal responses, questions, hedges, listening and turn-taking to encourage the other to talk; whereas men generally employ competitive styles as suggested by their silent responses and tendency to interrupt, both of which can be considered ways of competing with the other participants for attention and dominance in the conversation.

Private versus public language Women tend to conversation oriented towards the private life, as their listening and politeness propensities imply by their very nature as tools with which to be sensitive to private feelings and likeability; whereas men can be held to have a more public-oriented conversational technique - as is implied by their advice-giving response tendencies to questions, giving an outward and so more public impression of the man as knowledgeable - and by their verbal aggression propensities to outwardly and so publicly establish an hierarchy within the conversational setting.

Agreement versus dissent Women tend generally to have an agreement motivation in conversation, suggested by their usual half-implicit agreement to maintain topic continuity in a conversation at a rate higher to that of men. Men, on the other hand, tend more towards challenge in conversational motivations, a fact hinted at by their tendency to challenge the other’s conversation topic with a higher rate of topic change.

Intimate versus detached Women can be said to tend towards intimacy in conversing, as suggestive in their use of such politeness techniques as hedges, minimal responses and tag questions to cater for such intimate considerations as positive and negative face; whereas men may be held to exhibit independence and, indeed, distance in conversing, a fact implied by their reduced incidence of resorting to self-disclosure.

College Age Vernacular

On 1 December 2008 User:Lilfireball05 added a ~1000 word section under the heading College Age Vernacular. The entire section, while interesting, was original research. It cited sources, but those sources were support for the arguments made, not research summarized in the section.

I took it upon myself to move the entire section to User talk:Lilfireball05. If Lilfireball05 or other editors wish to restore it to Sociolinguistics, an argument to that effect can be made on this page - perhaps under a new heading.Cnilep (talk) 08:03, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Review quality with peers

look at the section that was titled "ethnic group" this is really poor, ethnic = street youth? which is it ethnic groups or gangs r they the same. U r identifying elements or sub cultures are they always ethnic, or an ethnic minority, urban language is the area of discussion, please review and re-write. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Halaqah (talk • contribs) 15:55, 2 January 2007 (UTC).

More works of Labov should be added. Mdoff 19:48, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

"new african reality"

Why is this paper linked to? Its author is not a linguist; its topic, despite its title, only tangentially relates to language in the same way that many essays of political commentary do. It does not resemble any linguistics paper I've ever seen. Putting this link in the article gives a completely misleading impression of what a typical sociolinguistics paper looks like. I don't know whether the author himself put it in there, but it should be dropped.205.212.73.70 01:17, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Fundamental concepts

Much has to be done here, I think. I edited the section on external and internal language, first of all because it reflects a poor understanding of the terms and the distinction, which is Chomskian, and of all the controversies in linguistics over the question of mentalism. It is not just a matter of a peaceful, complementary division of labor - the debates are never-ending (Pinker, Lakoff, Searle etc). Sociolinguists who know little about generative linguistics may be happy to think that "wow, those guys are finding out about the insides of our heads", but those with more knowledge are unlikely to settle that easily. One of the challenges for sociolinguistics is to delimit itself to other branches - pragmatics, for example. I put the whole thing at the end, but I am really not sure whether it belongs under the title "fundamental concepts", since they aren´t fundamental. Maybe there should be a section called controversies or something.--Grape1 10:05, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree that internal/external language is not a fundamental concept in contemporary sociolinguistics. It does appear in the history of the field - for example in the linguistic competence / communicative competence split - but more as a background division than as a fundamental concept. Cnilep (talk) 13:27, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Removed (after only four years!) Cnilep (talk) 13:20, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Further reading

I have removed two items from the 'Further reading' list: Ulla M. Connor's Contrastive rhetoric and Owen 'Alik Shahadah's Linguistics for a new African reality. Unlike most of the other 'further reading' items, neither provides an introduction to sociolinguistics, and its is arguable that neither is an application of sociolinguistics as such. Professor Connor says her work, "examines how first language and culture affect writing in English as a second or foreign language." Professor Shahadah's work is a political/historical critique of the words "black" (as applied to people) and "Sub-Saharan Africa" (see also "new african reality [sic]" above). I am tempted to remove Robin Lakoff's The Language War as well, since it is not a description of sociolinguistics, but an analysis of "political correctness" and other language wars controversies around language use, written for a popular audience. I will not remove it, however, pending comment from other editors. Cnilep (talk) 15:13, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Pages for region, class, age, and gender?

As I mentioned above, I think that Differences according to gender could warrant its own page. On the other hand, there is a Dialectology page, but no information here beyond a link to it. It would be wonderful if the Dialectology page editors would add a few lines to the Sociolinguistics page; it would also be great if someone(s) would undertake to create pages related to language and social class, age-linked language variation, and language and gender. Unfortunately I don't have the time to undertake any of these programs myself. I am therefore pleading for your help. I will also post this message at the talk:Dialectology and talk:Linguistlist pages. Cnilep (talk) 19:49, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

External links

Most of the external links do not seem appropriate or particularly helpful. The exception is the DMOZ open directory Applied Linguistics page. This seems appropriate for an encyclopedia entry. The other four pages are either too specific or too vague to be of particular use to most users of this page, I suspect.

"Language implementation in critical situations. Difficult customer" appears to be advice to call-center employees. It mentions several important strands of applied linguistics / sociocultural linguistics, but gives no references or pointers to fuller information.

"LANGUAGE IN INDIA" is essentially a list of bullet points sketching out rivalries and prejudices across linguistic lines in India.　They're interesting bullet points, but arguably not the most useful thing for people consulting an encyclopedia entry on sociolinguistics.

"Ten (Socio-) Linguistic Axioms" looks to be a class handout from Peter L Patrick. Again, these are bullet points that were, presumably, filled out by a classroom lecture. That lecture is not available on the web page.

"CAPL: Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon" is, as the name suggests, a pictorial lexicon (i.e. picture dictionary). This has no obvious connection to sociolinguistics.

I propose that these four pages should be removed from the External Links section.Cnilep (talk) 01:24, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. feel free to remove them. if anyone wants the links restored, they can feel free to add them back and discuss why Theserialcomma (talk) 02:15, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

request

That editors who contribute to and watch this article check out this Article for Deletion nomination and comment. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 19:28, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Sociolinguistics and Sociology of religion

It would be interesting if at one point in the sociology series we could blend in certain fields of sociology, for instance sociolinguistics and sociology of religion. I notice that the majority of languages in the world are dedicated or associated to a particular religion. English and German are tied to Evangelical Christianity, Romance languages to Roman Catholicism, Arabic and Farsi to Islam, Russian and Greek to Eastern Orthodoxy, Hebrew to Judaism. This has of course become less true with the rise of modernity and the Enlightenment, but the cultural pull of many languages towards certain religions still remains rather strong to this day. These kinds of relations between language and ancient spiritual cultures are part of the structure and agency debate in sociology. ADM (talk) 17:35, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Complimentary language and gender

The subsection Complimentary language under the section Differences according to gender is much smaller than the other subsections within that section. User:Spbm is creating a page called Complimentary language and gender, which the subsection points to. I would suggest that either (1) a bit of the introduction to that page be reproduced here, or (2) the subsection Complimentary language be removed. Cnilep (talk) 13:49, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

"See also"

Is there a reason that "See also" was put into an order other than alphabetic? The current order seems to be the fancy of the most recent user to edit the list. I propose that See also, References, Further reading, External links and any other lists be in alphabetic order. Cnilep (talk) 14:57, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Archive 1